A Liberated Mind Blog Review (part 2)

This is part two of my review of The Liberated Mind (part 1 is here). For this post I will cover elements of chapters 6-11.

Hayes starts chapter 6 by noting a flaw that many people make in life- they believe they must always be happy. This is not possible, nor is it a healthy expectation or mindset to have about life. The message of acceptance theory is that “life can be a rich journey, even with its sorrows”. This resonates with me personally as I can recall back when I was a young teen I encountered the insight captured by Robert Frost in his poem “The Road Not Taken”. This poem describes a fork in the road, two paths one could take in life. One path, the easier of the two, is well trodden as most travelers choose the path of least resistance. But Frost decides to take the more burdensome path, the poem concludes:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Having grown up in a household that took athleticism very seriously (my father was an Olympic athlete), the message of leaning into (versus try to avoid) adversity/failure/challenges was something I internalized from a young age. Hayes notes that our culture teaches us to deny or expunge difficult thoughts and emotions. This message resonates with our strong “fight or flight” instincts. But those instincts, which are adaptations that evolved to help guard us against physical threats in the external world, can become maladaptive when reacting to the internal experiences of our mind (e.g. pain and emotions). We are prone to engage in behaviours that protect us from these unpleasant feelings. Hayes notes:

So often, when life is not going well, it’s because we are doing things that give us smaller, sooner benefits at the expense of larger, later ones. The instant gratification of avoidance tricks us into trading away our future. In healthy development, our short-term gains fit with our long-term aims. So the trick is to use our capacity for symbolic thought to choose the short-term behaviours that will lead to the much richer later rewards that come from persisting even when the short-term steps are hard. (97)

Hayes emphasizes the value of the messages inside our pain (messages we don’t hear when hiding from pain). He details his own personal experience of a childhood memory of hearing his parents fighting. Revisiting these painful memories permitted Hayes to cultivate a sense of self-compassion for that little boy- for himself. There was meaning in those painful childhood memories and this helped him understand the roots of his own anxiety. And his desire to vanquish anxiety had prevented him from feeling a deep connection with his original purpose of becoming a psychologist- “I had wanted to do something about people’s suffering. This was not a decision of the head- it was one of the heart” (102). To avoid acknowledging and addressing his childhood pain Hayes instead focused very heavily on professional achievement.

One of the most significant insights from this chapter is that *we hurt where we care*. Attending to painful emotions and feelings is thus extremely important for our self-understanding, something that is stifled when we avoid pain and try instead to distract ourselves with the pursuit of persistent happiness.

In Chapter 7 titled “Committing to a New Course” Hayes details the importance of why Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is called – ACT… “at the end of the day, we are what we do and why we do it” (108). Values are an essential feature of making the critical pivots detailed by ACT. Hayes notes that values are not goals (achievements we are done with once completed), but instead are “chosen qualities of being and doing”. And a critical feature of the liberated mind is that we must make the “values pivot” to turn away from socially compliant or avoidant goals towards those values we have chosen as “our values”.

In Chapter 8 Hayes describes (p. 134) the “Life Compass”, which involves us describing what we really want in the following life domains:

Work
Intimate Relationships
Parenting and children
Education
Environment
Friends
Physical well-being
Family
Spirituality
Aesthetics
Community
Recreation

Attention is then given to the “internal barriers” that stand in the way of us realizing the things we desire in those domains. For example, if one wanted to improve their physical well-being but kept procrastinating about going to the gym. Hayes notes that we must take an honest look at our coping strategies and evaluate whether they are actually means of avoidance and how such strategies are keeping us from making the kinds of progress we would like to make.

In Part 2 of the book Hayes details the avoidance techniques he was prone to utilize before successfully applying ACT in his own life. These included practicing relaxation techniques, trying to think more rationally, having a beer, taking tranquilizers, etc (146). He invites us to derive (in a non-blaming fashion) our own list of anxiety alleviating avoidance strategies and then to ask ourselves if we keep doing what we are doing, is it likely we would get what we are getting? The internal voice of the Dictator from Within might try to rationalize why we should continue with our avoidant habits, but Hayes replies by saying it is time to answer the question- who do you trust, that voice in your mind or your experience?

In Chapter 9 on "The First Pivot: Defusion- putting the mind on a lease" Hayes details a cognitive fusion questionnaire which can help us assess our cognitive flexibility. The chapter also contains a number of exercises (many somewhat amusing), such as disobeying on purpose (e.g. while walking say "I cannot walk around this room", and giving your mind a name and singing about our sticking thoughts). These will help us get some distance from, and perspective on, our judgmental thoughts. More advanced exercises include social sharing. These defusion techniques, Hayes contends, can help us find a sense of freedom and connectedness with others.

Chapter 10 covers my favourite topic- the self (and the art of perspective taking). Hayes draws a contrast between our "conceptualized self" (which is ego-driven) and the "transcendent self". As social primates, we deeply desire a sense of belonging, of being heard and included in a group. By when this sense of belonging is employed in the service of protecting our ego, it can prove to be unhealthy as we tell ourselves lies to protect our ego (e.g. that we are a victim). The key second pivot of cognitive flexibility is learning how to invest our desire for a sense of belonging towards the "transcendent self" vs the ego of the "conceptualized self". The transcendent self is the sense of self we are aware of when we engage in cognitive perspective taking. Hayes starts the chapter off by asking us to recall a childhood memory. Doing this helps connect us to our transcendent self, and Hayes details how ACT can help us connect with a deeper sense of self. These include:

1. applying defusion methods to undermine attachment to the conceptualized self. (175)
2. becoming aware that we can hold our thought in awareness (e.g. "I am not my thoughts")
3. cultivate habits of perspective-taking through exercises that involve shifting perspectives in time, place and person.
4. use this sense of self to build a healthy sense of belonging and interconnection with others.

The chapter details things like rewriting one's story. The point of doing such exercises is not to write a positive story (e.g. "I am a happy person" or "I have learned from all past mistakes"), but rather to become aware that we are always story-telling. "We are creating a narrative that is but one of many possible narratives" (182).

The next installment of this review should appear in about a month.

Cheers,
Colin